Follow-up from Week 3:
4 design limitations (they were?)
Hand back quiz and discuss
Grading

Week review / web conversations
anything of note (perhaps pertaining to Proximity or Alignment)?
Tooth Fairy
Turn in Assignment 3

Illustrator
Review of basics
Pen Tool 101
-Bezier Curves
-Basic Exercises (download files here)
-Review Assignment 4

Theory
Color: RGB/CMYK/Pantone/oh my!
Review P & A
Introduce Repetition (Hampton Inn materials)

For next week:
Assignment 4

Anyone looking at a printed message will be influenced, within a split second of making eye contact, by everything on the page: the arrangement of various elements as well as the individual look of each one. In other words, an overall impression is created in our minds before we even start reading the first word. It’s similar to the way we respond to a person’s presence before we know anything about him or her, and then later find it difficult to revise our first impression.

Erik Spiekermann, Stop Stealing Sheep

We spoke this week about natural design limitations (can you name all four?) that are part of any project we will work on. Ted over at North Temple sums up some great design truths after dealing with the Tooth Fairy and a four year old. Specifically, he talks about the subtleties of working within the client specifications.

She had been wiggling her first loose tooth for a few days, and it finally came out last night. When telling my wife what she expected under her pillow in return for her tooth, she said in fine alliterative fashion, “I want dollars and diamonds. Cause I’m a girl.” The interaction design lesson? Know your audience and what they want and expect.

Please read the whole article and be familiar with Ted’s conclusions about client specs. Be prepared to discuss his point and your opinion thereon at the beginning of class on Wednesday.

Follow-up from Week 2:
Way more info on Vector Graphics than you can use
Way more info on Raster (Bitmapped) Images than you can use

Week review / web conversations
encounters with design?
anything of note (perhaps pertaining to Proximity)?
design constraints?
Company Profiles

Theory
Joshua Trees and new cars
Review of Proximity
Discussion on Alignment
Time permitting - Color: RGB/CMYK/Pantone/oh my!

Illustrator
review of text boxes, basics, modifier keys, shortcuts
Use Illustrator to reinforce Alignment
-strengthen Ted Nugent’s business card
-design simple book cover (using Proximity and Alignment):
Title: How Superman Contributes to Communism
Subtitle: And why Nickelback harms any potential relationship you might have someday
Author: Hando Bale

Time permitting - intro to the pen tool

For next week:
Assignment 3

Jason Santa Maria has posted a nice little article dealing with the ongoing debate surrounding screen widths within the web design realm (but you already knew that, right?).

So how is this relevant to us? In the article, Jason identifies a couple of limitations that are universal to design. The limiting factors that Jason mentions will affect every project that you ever work on.

Read the article and identify these general design limitations. Don’t be surprised if I ask you to tell me what they are in a quiz at the beginning of class.

Read the whole article here.

Here’s a great read that can/should have bearing on your careers as designers. Seth Godin discusses how to be remarkable. Some items of note:

• Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me.
• Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.
• Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn’t always matter which edge, more that you’re at (or beyond) the edge.

This class is about learning the rules of design and living in them. The time to break the rules comes only after you fully understand them and understand why you need to break them. That said, I don’t believe these two concepts (living within the confines of the rules and being remarkable) are mutually exclusive. You can do both.

So do it.

Read all ten items on Seth’s list here.

Week review / web conversations

• RSS successes
• iPhone story
• other encounters with design?
• vector vs. pixel

Illustrator

• review of basic shapes
• review of workspace
• modifier keys (hint: they modify stuff)
• text fields (freestanding and predefined)
• layers
• make our bogus business card:
  Ted Nugent
  Sleepygoat Productions
  (435) 229-9999
  thenoog@sleepygoat.com
  sleepygoat.com

First Principles of design

• Proximity
• Alignment

No, not that Real World. Our mortgage paying real world.

Business Week has posted an article on the newly announced (but not newly released - drats!) Apple iPhone. The article is pertinent to us because it throws concepts of last week’s discussion on design into sharp relief. Without getting bogged down in the minutia of the product details themselves, give the article a read (here <-). Really.

I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve read it (you did read it, right?), come to class prepared to tell me and the class how it throws concepts of last week’s discussion on design into sharp relief. How does it apply to our working definition of what design is? What lessons can (potentially) be applied to what we intend to do with communication (visual) design?

To all that showed up for class last night and participated: thanks. I know that we covered a metric ton of information, some minutia and some foundational stuff, and it was a lot to take in. I enjoyed meeting you all and hope to learn some names soon (no promises, though).

To summarize the things I’ve asked you to for next week’s class:

• look over this site and get familiar with the syllabus
• get familiar with the lab and play with Illustrator in the lab setting
• get the class book if you don’t already have it and be sure NOT to open it yet
• be sure to get your RSS reader loaded up for assignment 1

As this site is setup all bloggy style, I’d like you to drop me a comment to this post so you know how to do it. Comments allow you to communicate with me and your comments may help others who are reading the site. They further the conversation.

Leave a comment by hitting the “No Comments >>” link or “x Comments >>” link at the bottom of a post. Or, simply click the headline for the post and scroll to the comment fields.

I hope to see you all next Wednesday.

Howdy. This week we should be covering the following:

Introduction of the course

• introduction of each other
• why this is a tough course and how to survive
• syllabus overview

Overview of the broad concept of design

• what is design?
• example of design
• define:
• how does design communicate?

Illustrator overview

• the workspace
• the tools
• basic shapes (and the modifier keys you need to know)
• basics of type